Anzu stared at his hand. She would really be dancing with Yugi now. She couldn't believe it.

"Yes, you may," she answered, placing her hand in his and looking into his eyes with new purpose. Now he was not only her best friend, but also her dance partner.

He pulled her gently forward and brought her close to him using her hand, and she crashed into him, her left hand finding the back of his arm, and his hand finding hers, their fingers wrapping around each other. Slowly, he moved his right arm from his side and slid it around her back, his hand coming to rest on her partially-exposed shoulder blade. Her skin was warm to the touch.

Atem felt a familiar ache fill his body and soul.

The song Anzu had put on to help Atem practice hearing the beat ended, and a new one had taken its place. When the next one came on, they would start their own personal path to paradise, dancing in each other's arms, held close to one another.

The brunette shied at Yugi's hold on her, which was pretty solid. Now that she was much, much closer in proximity to him than before, she spoke with a volume no higher than just above a whisper.

"The key to partner dancing, is that the leader decides what happens," she explained.

"What do you mean?"

"People can dance together in partners rather spontaneously not because they've memorized the whole dance they're about to do, but because the leader makes the follower feel the move they're about to do."

When Atem only waited for her to continue, Anzu felt a demonstration would be best. "Here, watch." She suddenly made them switch positions – she the leader and he the follower – and said, "Ready?" to which the pharaoh only seemed unsure.

But as soon as she said "Go," he had already moved, and in exactly the way she wanted him to.

He blinked in bewilderment.

"I didn't tell you what we were doing, did I? But you felt me push into you, so you stepped back."

What she was implying dawned upon the pharaoh. "Ah! So there is a slight delay."

"Correct! Partnered dancers don't move at the same time. The leader moves first, and the follower feels how the leader wants to move, because he pushes or pulls the follower a certain way using this strong stance. From this frame, you can feel my movements into or away from you, and so long as your feet are loose, you'll move with me," she explained, emphasizing her message by rocking back and forth in a step she never taught him, yet somehow taking him along with her as she did so. "The main thing the follower has to practice is their form: how they make their feet land when they're moved across the dance floor so they don't stomp everywhere or get their legs tangled up in each other."

Anzu switched their positions so that now Atem was again the leader. "So really, I'm making you do most of the work!" she proclaimed, sticking her tongue out at him playfully.

Atem grinned. She was trifling with him.

Yugi popped into his mind. "Is she…flirting with us?"

To this, the pharaoh only continued grinning.

"Try the steps with me a little bit without paying attention to the music. It's a little different moving with someone else than it is alone."

Atem obeyed, and without warning her, he pushed into her and began their basic step. Anzu smiled when they completed it. When they started the box, the pharaoh stepped a little too slowly, so the two of them got a bit tangled in one another.

"It's okay," Anzu cooed, reassuring him. With a slightly timid nod, he continued moving them. He recited the steps she had taught him with his feet, over and over again.

And just as he hit the one-minute mark of doing so, the song that had been playing ended. They would be together now, working as one, this time to the music.

"Ready?" Anzu asked, and just as she did, the next song, "Caribbean Blue", came on. Her heart leapt; she loved this song.

"This one's fast," she warned quietly in the seconds that spanned the song's brief opening. But when she looked up at her partner, he gave no appearances of being intimidated or afraid.

Atem closed his eyes and stilled his breath, listening closely. The beat was convoluted at the beginning, but…

There!

And with that, he moved forward, taking Anzu with him. The first two sets, he did a basic step followed by a box step, but after that, he left out the basic step entirely and instead did large box steps over and over.

One, two, three, one, two, three… The count came on automatically in his head after so much recent practice.

As he got the hang of it, and his feet started to feel as if they were moving by themselves to such a trivial step, he focused on rotating Anzu around him as he moved. He slowly began doing the steps with a bias so that they turned slightly to his right each box step, and – when he became more familiar with how it felt to step while rotating – he turned even more and more with her each time.

Anzu couldn't take her eyes off of the man before her. He had taken what he had been taught by her and surpassed all hopes of what she thought it could be, and instead evolved it into pure bliss. She was hopelessly locked in an overwhelming feeling of euphoria, her steps as light as if they were walking on a cloud. He was dancing with her, moving her across the floor in such a basic but so beautifully-executed step that made her close her eyes for a brief moment in the face of its intensity. But when she closed her shutters, she realized the only thing she saw was what she could already see while her eyes were open.

Yugi's face.

She opened her eyes again, and the crimson globes of the man staring back at her were just as focused on her as she was on him. In her peripheral, she could see the dance studio whirr past her in a blur.

When the chorus to the song came on, Anzu's soul felt as if it would drown in butterflies. Her heart was beating fast, and yet she felt a whole-body calm soothing her every limb, telling her nothing but to keep going, keep going, and fly with this boy forever.

Yugi took her on a ride, in her mind lifting her up to touch the clouds with her fingertips and twirling her around so her dress billowed out with the soft wind. Each time he cast her away from him and let her create a magical dance of her own, he brought her back and reintegrated her into his movements as if she were no more and no less than an extension of himself.

The song end brought her back out of her daydreams, and she cast her sparkling sapphires on the one who had been keeping her afloat the entire time.

Yugi.

When she looked at him, every sound in the room suddenly faded out. As they slowly came to a stop, and their arms relaxed again, she tilted her head and felt herself memorizing every last bit of detail in his focused orbs of crimson.

He made no reply. After their beautiful dance as one being, he chose to say nothing, only holding onto her with the tender remnants of their dance frame.

And that suited her just fine.

Before she knew it, she had raised her hand and drawn it up to his face. In the next moment, she touched it to his skin, dragging her fingertips lightly against his cheek.

And in his equally potent trance, he slowly turned his head toward her finger, then planted his lips against it.